Multifaceted issues of the homeless deserve candidates’ attention this election year | Opinion
Politics and the vulnerable
More Americans were homeless in 2023 than ever before – especially among the elderly and disabled.
It isn’t uncommon to see unhoused people in wheelchairs, carrying oxygen tanks and dealing with a variety of other health challenges.
Politicians have proposed tent cities, mental institutions and passing stricter laws to keep the homeless off the streets.
Homelessness is obviously a multifaceted issue.
In addition to addressing the lack of affordable housing, we need more conversations about Social Security and Medicaid. SSI, a program for seniors and people with disabilities, has strict asset limitations. These arbitrary laws discourage recipients from earning and saving more money.
If seniors and people with disabilities have more than $2,000 in savings, the benefit can be revoked. High rent outpaces federal disability payments. The program itself locks millions into poverty.
Warehousing people who are capable of living independently will ultimately cost more than addressing systemic causes of homelessness among the elderly and disabled.
Now that the primaries are happening, it is time for candidates to discuss policies that affect our most vulnerable citizens. Voters deserve better than screeds, gaffes and meltdowns.
M. Griffin, Spartanburg
Not again
Less than a decade ago, we saw an energy disaster in South Carolina. The V.C. Summer Nuclear Station’s construction project fizzled out after years of delays and cost overruns. Customers ended up footing the bill for a failed plant that generated no electricity.
The companies involved, Santee Cooper and SCE&G (now Dominion Energy), promised they would change. But here we are, just a few years later, and the utilities are at it again.
Despite an independent report suggesting cheaper options, Santee Cooper and Dominion want another mega-project — a gas plant in Colleton County. Once again, utilities want a blank check backed by customers to build a big, risky project. This gas plant won’t be complete for at least seven years, even though utilities say we need more energy now.
I hope this time decision-makers see the mega-project for the potential boondoggle it could be and pursue other options. Call or write your state representatives and let them know that any new resource plan from the utilities must include renewables, and must have a clear path to transition off of fossil fuels.
M. Bogle, Beaufort
Teach persuasion
A search of the South Carolina K-12 ELA (English language arts) teaching standards reveals that propaganda techniques, a.k.a “techniques of persuasion,” do not exist. Previous year’s standards infused the various techniques in grades 5-12.
Why is this important?
Everyday these techniques are employed in media messages from product advertisements to political campaign commercials, but South Carolina students won’t recognize them because they’ve been omitted from teaching standards. The omission is a form of bias.
Once again the decision to omit propaganda in instruction leaves our students behind.
F. Baker, Columbia
Please, Mr. Norman
Is it too much to ask Congressman Ralph Norman to go crawl under a rock somewhere and just keep his mouth shut?
His latest travesty is to object to the appointment of the eminently qualified James Smith to a state judgeship.
This is the same representative who three years ago emailed President Trump to invoke “marshall” law to stay in office three days before President Biden’s inauguration.
It’s bad enough to have a congressman who embarrasses our state by showing he is a traitor to the Constitution; do we have to have one that can’t spell either?
H. Smithson, Columbia
